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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Google employs 200,000 people. Suicide rate in the US is ~13 per 100,000 per year. This means there is an expected base rate of Google employees committing suicide per year regardless of working conditions that is likely higher than just 2. Maybe there is a real issue but two suicides within such large number of employees isn’t statistically significant.

EDIT: I added "statistically" in the last sentence to clarify my intended meaning.

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> Google employs 200,000 people. Suicide rate in the US is ~13 per 100,000 per year. This means there is an expected base rate of Google employees committing suicide per year regardless of working conditions that is likely higher than just 2. Maybe there is a real issue but two suicides within such large number of employees isn’t really significant.

How many of those 13/100,000/year have jobs?

You're assuming randomness among the US population. Might be a good assumption.

However, there are externalities to this suicide that may affect others who work at Google or in NY, and so the story is worthy of being contextualized. It might be clickbait to put the word "Google" in the title but not because of probabilistic irrelevance. People who kill themselves at work have an impact on coworkers and company, no two ways about it.

Suicide is tragic regardless of the circumstances, and it's a really bad take to try to minimize this because it's not statistically "significant" or "clickbait".

They weren't "minimizing." The point is that this article is trying to create a "Googlers are killing themselves" narrative, which is unwarranted.

There's nothing in the article (if you read it) that tries to paint that narrative. As far as NYP goes, it's actually pretty mild and factual. I don't understand why so many commenters here are jumping at the chance to defend poor little Google from the evils of bad journalism.

Also how is > Maybe there is a real issue but two suicides within such large number of employees isn’t really significant.

NOT minimizing?

It's /mildly/ crafting the narrative in the very title... "second worker," which is implying "this is a pattern." Even the first word of the title is "Google."

As for the minimizing, remember that on HN we aim to take the best possible interpretation of our fellow members' comments. I'll assume that the person who wrote "isn't really significant" isn't a heartless monster, and therefore what they meant what that "this didn't merit a Google-focused NYPost article."

I agree that suicide is tragic and we shouldn't minimize any instance of someone taking their own life.

I was trying to say that linking it to Google and implying it is a trend based on just two suicides given their extremely large employee count isn't statistically sound without additional supporting data. I was speaking about the link to Google rather than the suicides themselves.

If you want to have a meaningful comparison, then compare Google’s suicide rates with those of people in their thirties, gainfully employed / making six figures and have free access to mental health resources.

Mental health resources at Google are there to collect evidence in case the company closes to fire you and needs to defend against a lawsuit.

2 per year worldwide vs 2 per half-year in NYC office.

Bad take

"Significant" here meant "worth of a national news article."

It's clear that the journalist is crafting a "Why are Googlers killing themselves?" narrative.

If you're seriously considering suicide, why would you bother going in to work, and then commit suicide in your place of work (your company's HQ, no less), if not to make a statement of some sort?

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